1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a virtual private network (VPN) service management system and to a VPN service manager and a VPN service agent comprising that system.
More particularly, the present invention relates to a mode of operation of a VPN service in a case where for example an Internet service provider (ISP), an application service provider (ASP), or a company having a plurality of places of business and operating an extra network among these places uses a VPN provided by a type 1 carrier so as to advance a widearea promotion of business. Note that, in the following explanation, a carrier providing a VPN service will be referred to as a “provider”, and the ISP, ASP, company, etc. utilizing the VPN service will be referred to as “customers”. Also, networks operated and managed by the provider and the customers will be referred to as a “provider network” and “customer networks”, respectively.
2. Description of the Related Art
Along with the various new services appearing one after another on the Internet, for example, on-line banking and Internet telephone, customers mainly utilizing the Internet in business have been increasingly calling for a higher speed and higher quality communications environment at low cost. In such a communications environment, it becomes indispensable to secure network security. Therefore, an IP-VPN capable of utilizing the Internet as a virtual dedicated line is now attracting attention. Providers have started to provide high quality communication services using such IP-VPN's according to their customer needs.
When a customer side uses this IP-VPN high quality communication service, it designates conditions regarding the desired-connecting nodes, guaranteed bandwidth, QoS, policy, data loss (packet loss), delay time, etc. at the time of contracting with the provider in advance and pays a fixed service usage fee in accordance with the contract conditions to the provider side in units of for example months. In this case, if desired, the customer side can change the contract conditions of the IP-VPN high quality communication service (hereinafter also simply referred to as a VPN service) from time to time usually with some charge.
Conventionally, when changing the contract conditions, (i) the customer or its agent applies for the change by means of for example the mail, facsimile, or telephone and makes arrangements for ordering the service from the provider, then (ii) an operator of the provider sets the VPN service conditions necessary for the change. By going through such a process, an environment capable of providing the intended service to a customer is prepared.
Summarizing the problem to be solved by the invention, the procedure for changing the contract conditions between a customer and a provider conventionally took a predetermined period, for example, a few days to a few weeks, from application to when the changed service could be commenced. For this reason, there was the inconvenience that requests for changes of the VPN service usage conditions occurring sporadically or irregularly at the customer side such as in the following examples of use could not be dealt with timely:
1) Example of use at a company: A president of a company wishes to circulate New Year's greetings or announce a rough medium term plan to all members of all places of business at one time via a company intranet.
2) Example of use by ISP: The ISP wishes to double the bandwidths of its existing VPN's at one time for the start of the business of a new service.
3) Example of use by ASP: The ASP wishes to prepare for a rush of applications when offering a Web ticket sale service, for example, only during a period of selling tickets for a popular group.
Also, the network management systems of a customer network and a provider network were configured completely independent from each other, so there was the problem in that the quality conditions or usage conditions of a VPN service could not be easily changed to deal with sudden changes of the VPN service conditions detected inside the customer network, for example, an increase of the traffic or amount of communication packets or a deterioration of an Internet access response performance.
Also, from the standpoint of the provider side, while facilities in the provider network for providing the VPN service can be investigated for the quality conditions, everything from the selection of models to management of the customer edge (CE) installed inside the customer network is entrusted to the customer side, so there was the problem in that it becomes difficult to fulfill a service level agreement (SLA) concluded at the time of contracting due to for example a later change of the model and specifications at the customer edge (CE) side.